utempter security update (SSA:2004-110-01)

New utempter packages are available for Slackware 9.1 and -current to fix a security issue. (Slackware 9.1 was the first version of Slackware to use the libutempter library, and earlier versions of Slackware are not affected by this issue)

The utempter package provides a utility and shared library that allows terminal applications such as xterm and screen to update /var/run/utmp and /var/log/wtmp without requiring root privileges. Steve Grubb has identified an issue with utempter-0.5.2 where under certain circumstances an attacker could cause it to overwrite files through a symlink. This has been addressed by upgrading the utempter package to use Dmitry V. Levin's new implementation of libutempter that does not have this bug.

Here are the details from the Slackware 9.1 ChangeLog:+--------------------------+Mon Apr 19 13:51:01 PDT 2004patches/packages/utempter-1.1.1-i486-1.tgz: Upgraded to libutempter-1.1.1 (this is a new version written by Dmitry V. Levin of ALT Linux). This upgrade fixes a low-level security issue in utempter-0.5.2 where utempter could possibly be tricked into writing through a symlink, and is a cleaner implementation all-around.